UNIX Naming Restrictions & Conventions

Usernames, passwords, and filenames must comply with standard Unix naming conventions.

Username Restrictions

A name of anywhere from 3-16 alphanumeric characters (i.e., the numeric characters 0 - 9 and the alphabetic characters a - z) is legal for email accounts, FTP accounts, and telnet accounts.

Password Restrictions

POP/FTP/Telnet passwords should contain 6 – 8 alphanumeric characters. For the highest level of security, choose a “difficult” password that contains some combination of upper-case and lower-case letters and numerals.

Server File Names

There is no limitation to the length of file names on the server. You can use some punctuation marks in characters in any filename: (e.g. +_-&).

HTML Note: While you can use spaces in your filenames, please note that some versions of Netscape will “throw away” anything after a space. This will result in a “File Not Found” error. Also, the UNIX operating system doesn’t really know what to do with filenames that contain spaces. Therefore, it’s a good idea to avoid the use of spaces in your file names.

HTML Tip: Remember that Unix is case-sensitive. We’ve found that developing the habit of always naming your files in all lower-case avoids a great deal of confusion.